Trump must make amends

By Scot Lehigh

Published
2:34 pm EST, Friday, November 11, 2016

Democracy has its civic obligations, and in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s upset victory, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama fulfilled theirs. Now it’s time for Trump to rise above the tawdry tone of his campaign and show some similar grace.

At midmorning Wednesday, Clinton delivered a concession speech that exemplified class. Celebrating the American tradition of peacefully transferring power, she urged Americans to greet their president-elect with an open mind and to give him a chance to lead. This, about a man who derisively labeled her “crooked Hillary” and declared that, if elected, he would try to put her in prison.

Obama has been similarly gracious. On Thursday, after his meeting with Trump at the White House, the president offered warm words about making the Trumps feel welcome, and pledged to do everything he could to help his successor succeed. That followed upon the remarks Obama offered early Wednesday, after it became apparent that Trump had won. “We are now all rooting for his success,” Obama said, recalling how helpful George W. Bush had been to him.

No matter how hard it may have been to offer those words, these are roles that a democracy requires its leaders to play, words it needs them to voice.

But what of the obligations that sit on Donald Trump’s shoulders?

He first emerged politically, in 2011, by riding the racially-tinged birther nonsense to prominence, repeatedly questioning whether Barack Obama was really born in this country. In this election cycle, much of his political approach was about running down Clinton and riling up resentments. In a Manchester rally on Monday night, I watched (yet again) as his frenzied supporters screamed “lock her up, lock her up,” while Trump stood there smirking. It was a dismaying spectacle, at least for anyone concerned about the erosion of restraint and responsibility that a healthy democracy needs in both its leaders and its citizens.

No one should harbor any illusion that Trump will apologize for either his birtherism or his banana republic rhetoric. That would take a bigger man. Still, he needs to make a real and significant gesture here. That means finding a way to offer some appropriately appreciative words about Obama and his legitimate accomplishments, something that goes well beyond his Thursday description of the president as a “very good man.”

He owes Clinton even more, having labeled her “the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency” and talked, absurdly, of appointing a special prosecutor to investigate her. Those remarks were not just invidious, they were deeply corrosive to the important tradition Clinton and Obama underscored on Wednesday: our democracy’s peaceful transfer of power.

Nor is it enough for Trump now to say, as he did in his victory speech, that “we owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude for her service to our country.” He needs to acknowledge that his comments about Clinton went way beyond the pale.

It’s relatively easy for supporters of the losing candidate to embrace the winner as their president if he has campaigned in a high-minded manner. There, one thinks of the affection and admiration most Americans had for President Ronald Reagan, even though many disagreed with his policies. But it is quite another for disappointed voters to accept a winner who treated their champions as shabbily as did Trump. Most voters did not support him; nationally, a plurality backed Hillary Clinton. He has amends to make if he hopes to win their acceptance.